A particular way to use translation is as a
post-reading procedure to evaluate students’
comprehension of a text. By its very nature,
translation offers many opportunities to
emphasize the specific details and main ideas
of a translated text, especially those that may
not have been correctly understood by students.
Below are some advantages of translation
as a post-reading task.
Translation covers all textual elements
When translating a text, students come into
contact with all the main ideas and specific
details of a reading passage. Translation necessitates
the close reading of the entire passage,
which provides valuable information for the
instructor. Translation can improve comprehension
since it encourages the students to
read a passage carefully and precisely at the
word, sentence, and text levels (Van Els et al.
1984). Therefore, the final product informs
the teacher as to which lexical items, structures,
and ideas are problematic. Unacceptable
renditions also give clues to particular features
of interlanguage that may be at work.
The analysis of results can be extended to
language use and textual organization, both
of which are important in language learning
(Uzawa 1996). Language style and pragmatics
can be studied as well. Appropriately designed
tasks for different ages and proficiency levels can
help learners become familiar with different features
of literary, scientific, and technical texts.
Translation does not require production
in the L2
Comprehension questions should, by definition,
focus on the skill they purport to assess:
reading comprehension. At beginning levels,
techniques such as multiple-choice and true/
false questions are good tasks to assess reading
comprehension because they do not require
oral production of responses in the L2. Nuttall
(1982) even suggests that multiple-choice and
true/false questions be given in the L1, as he
feels that the “inability to express themselves in
the FL needlessly limits the kinds of response
students give, and the quality of the response
too” (131).
It is also possible that short answers and
written summaries in the L2 can lead to production
problems and therefore not accurately
assess a student’s actual reading comprehension.
This is why some researchers advocate the use
of L1 even when responding to short-answer
questions (Hughes 2003; Nuttall 1982).
As Hughes (2003) describes it, testing techniques
“should not add a significantly difficult
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task on top of reading. This is one reason for
being wary of requiring candidates to write
answers, particularly in the language of the
text” (143). These problems are avoided in
translation, which does not require production
in the L2. Students display their understanding
of the L2 text by responding in the L1,
which is an excellent measure of their understanding
of the L2 text on many levels, including
vocabulary, specific details, main ideas, and
textual organization.